Tanya Briggs came through the gate with a gift bag so full of tissue that the bag itself looked secondary, and she hugged Denise like a woman claiming a friendship in public. They had worked the front desk together until Tanya moved to a pediatric clinic across town. Tanya had opinions about children that she delivered as jokes, and the jokes had a way of landing on Andre, who did not perform for her. "Where's my birthday princess?" Tanya called, and Imani ran, and the hat stayed on, and Tanya made the face people make when a dress has done its job. She glanced at Andre, who was pouring ice into a cup for a smaller cousin. "And the man of the house. You too cool for a hat, Andre?"
"I guess," he said.
"I guess," Tanya repeated, pleased, as if she had located his personality. "Leon, you better watch this one. Quiet boys grow up and take the remote."
Leon laughed. It was the laugh he used at the shop, generous and a little late. Andre smiled with his mouth and kept pouring. The ice rattled. He liked the sound because it gave him something to finish.
Carol and Frank Odell came from next door without bothering to walk around to the front, which was the privilege of a shared fence and twenty years of not quite friendship. Carol brought a bowl of grapes and a card with Imani's name on it in careful cursive. "I didn't know if the big one was today too," she said to Denise, not unkindly, only with the honesty of a woman who had heard two dates and seen one banner. "I can run back and write Andre on it."
"It's fine," Denise said. "He knows. Don't trouble yourself."
Carol looked at Andre, uncertain, and Andre, who had heard, said, "Thank you for coming," which made Carol feel worse and better at the same time. She put the card on the table. Frank shook Leon's hand and started talking about a leak in a hose bib, and Leon went toward that conversation like a man toward a marked exit.
There were others: Denise's cousin Renee with two small boys who immediately found the dirt along the fence; a girl from Imani's class named Sasha with her father, who stayed only long enough to be seen staying; Miss Donnelle from the church, who did not eat pork and had been warned, correctly, that there would be none. The speaker on the patio played low. The sun was high and ordinary. Someone had brought a bubble wand. Imani stood in the middle of the yard in the multicolored dress and the blue hat and blew bubbles as if the bubbles had been her idea all along. People took pictures with their phones. Denise posed her once, twice, a third time beside the banner, and the third time Andre was in the edge of the frame until Denise's hand, light and practiced, steered his shoulder just out of it.
"Go see if Miss Donnelle wants a chair in the shade," she said to him.
He went. He did not slam anything. He had learned the price of a sound.